Aina The Demon
Story by Natalie Saya Des Marais. Illustrations by Marta Maszkiewicz.
The villagers were celebrating. Again.
It seemed to Aina that they came up with a reason to celebrate every fortnight, boastful in their joy. She snorted to cover up the envy that fired out of her eyes as she watched the villagers walk through the night in their yukata robes, their gleeful smiles lit with the silver glow of the sparklers held out in front of them. The smell of yakisoba noodles wafted through the tiny crack in her wall, where she peered out of, and her stomach grumbled. What cruelty.
Alas, they were just being human. Humans seemed to be born with a natural ability to laugh, to embrace - effortless, as if they didn’t even think about whether they might be ridiculed or hunted for who they were, or accidentally hurting someone.
Not so for the oni, like Aina. Demons like her fumbled around in the world, their huge horns knocking things off shelves and, on occasion, impaling people. Aina hadn’t ever seriously hurt anyone. Yet. But she wasn’t about to risk it. She’d heard tales of other oni who had ventured into human territory, and ended up mauling innocent humans - or getting hurt themselves. The humans weren’t trying to be cruel, Aina knew, but sometimes they could be.
She watched now as a young woman about her own age laughed and twirled around, arms spread wide. Aina tried to contort her own face to look like the human’s, but a smile didn’t come naturally for her, with her monster mouth and giant, pointed tusks.
Silly girl. Demons couldn’t feel joy, much less express it with their disgusting face. Everyone knew that. She pulled her blanket over her enormous, hairy shoulders and tried not to cry. It was always so cold in this room.
Thump.
Aina froze as she heard the footsteps approaching. There were bigger, uglier oni that lived in the cottage with her. She could hear them just outside her door, and imagined what they might be doing. Torturing humans that needed to be punished, she guessed. Tearing their skin off and beating them with their iron clubs. Aina couldn’t stand the sight of them. How could a living being be so… ugly? Their three eyes, their red skin - and of course, the horns. Disgusting, she told herself, running her hand over the place on her forehead where her own horn would grow someday.
Aina knew that they wouldn’t dare to enter her room. They hadn’t tried for her 20 years of life thus far, and she was sure that they wouldn’t now. But it was an altogether different story if she ever tried to leave.
Once when she was younger, she’d tried to escape the cottage. Three demons had stood in front of the doorway, blocking her path. They didn’t hurt her - they didn’t even try. They simply stood there, looking menacing, and clearly unwilling to allow her passage. She didn’t fight them. How could she? Some of these demons were thousands of years older than her, and the older a demon was, the stronger and more violent.
That night, just like so many nights before, Aina waited until she heard their thumping was replaced by violent snores. She became a shadow, carefully willing her giant legs to step quietly over their heads so as to not wake them as she creeped toward the door, praying it wouldn’t creak.
With one turn of the knob, she was free! There was no feeling she loved more than this. Her demon paws stomped over the grass and past other cottages where, she thought jealously, humans were sure to be sleeping soundly. She was free, and for an instant she forgot about how miserable she was and how much she desperately wished to be anything but a demon.
She ran until he reached the very edge of the village, where the bamboo forest began. A place filled with secrets, it was said - secrets that would change the receiver forever. Aina kept running, and she wasn’t scared. She ran and she ran, until --
Plop.
She was... wet. She had fallen into… liquid?. It was like the clear, refreshing water that the other demons brought her in a vase every night, but she had never seen so much of it in her life. It expanded as far out as she could see. She sat waist-high in it. What was this place?
Aina ran her hand through the surface of the water around her, and watched as ripples of light danced across the expanse. There was light here, inside of the water. How could it be? Aina found the origin of the light in the water - a white, shining circle that looked exactly like the moon.
Aina gazed up to the sky. There it was, the same bright moon that shone through the crack in the wall of the cottage night after night. It was full and glowing tonight, bathing everything in a mysterious stillness. Two moons? Aina thought. No - not two. One and the same, the moon in the sky and a reflection of the very same moon in the water. It had to be.
And then, as she examined this mysterious second moon in the water, another sight caught her eye. A girl, Aina realized, horror-struck. A human girl, looking back at her from underneath the water. The girl was beautiful, with almond-shaped eyes and a mane of dark, curly hair around her small face. She didn’t look exactly like the humans Aina had seen outside of her cottage, but she was still - beautifully and undeniably - human.
Aina reached out for the girl underneath the water. And the girl underneath the water reached out for her. When their hands were to touch, all Aina felt was the coldness of the water. The girl disappeared, but after a few seconds, the image of her reformed.
What? Aina touched her face. The girl mimicked her, and touched her own face with the same hand. Her hornless, tuskless, human face. Aina touched her demon’s mane, and the girl, at the same moment, touched her own beautiful, curly hair. Human hair.
This was the bamboo forest’s secret for her, a secret that would change her forever.
Aina stumbled home, numb with shock. She didn’t know what to do. Could it really be true? If it was, then why had she spent so long locked away in this room? And worse: what if it wasn’t true? Aina put her hands in her face - a face that, even though she now knew differently, still felt ugly to her; deformed.
The next morning, she creaked open the door to her bedroom.
An oni appeared in front of her. He was one of the oldest, she knew from the size of his horns. Aina shuddered, but she had to know.
“I want to be freed,” she said to him, boldly. “I’ve gone to the bamboo forest and discovered your secret. I know I’m not an oni. I’m a human girl, and you can’t keep me here any longer. I demand that you let me go.”
The ancient oni, to Aina’s surprise, smiled. “Of course you are human,” he said to her in a voice that was kinder than she expected. “We have never tried to make you think you were not. You arrived here to this cottage one day, just a little girl, convinced you were one of us. What could we do but to let you stay? We have tried to care for you. We have never hurt you or tried to stop you from leaving. Once, you had made up your mind to leave, and we stood before you, ready to celebrate your awakening. But you changed your mind, and retreated to your room in fear. A human girl does not deserve to spend her life locking herself away from the world. You are free, Aina. Be free.”
And Aina began to cry, because she knew it to be true.
Aina could hear the taiko drums beating their steady rhythm of joy and celebration outside. She pushed open the door of the cottage, and looked out at the humans - happy and together. Her heart ached. How could she ever fit in with them? She stood in the doorway, longing to be part of the world. She took one timid, tiny step forward. And then another.
Suddenly, she froze. All of the humans looked toward her, staring. She wasn’t close enough to see their expressions, but she doubted they were friendly. What are they staring at?, she thought frantically. Aren’t I a human, just like them? And then another voice: Of course not, fool. You’ll never be like them.
She couldn’t take it. She turned around to run home - and collided face-first with the giant belly of the ancient oni. She understood in an instant what the humans were staring at.
“What are you doing here?!” she snarled at them. “You can’t follow me out here. How can I fit in with the humans when I have ugly demons towering behind me? You have to go home. If they know that I live with demons, they’ll never accept me.”
The ancient oni looked at her sadly. “We cannot go home,” he told her. “When we took you into our cottage, we took an oath. We promised the gods that we would remain with you. But the legends that speak of our violence are untrue. We will not hurt anyone. We will only stay with you, silent and harmless. As for the humans’ reaction, that is something we cannot predict. Of course, it is your choice. We can all go home together, if you wish.”
Aina swallowed. After all her suffering, she couldn’t bear to return to that cold, dark room. All alone. No. She would have to be brave.
She turned back around and walked again, step by step, closer to the humans, who were still staring at her. She almost couldn’t bear the shame. She was human, perhaps; but a human who had ugly monsters hanging on to her every step no matter where she went. She could get away from the cottage, but she would always be the girl who’d lived with the oni. And that wasn’t very much better than being an ugly, unlovable oni herself.
“It’s over. I’ll never be one of them. Let’s go home,” Aina whispered to the oni through her tears. But as she turned away, something caught her eye.
Demons. Aina gasped. They all had demons. She watched as a huge, dragon-like creature followed one human around as it breathed fire from its nostrils. An old woman swatted at 20 small, fairy-like demons that were flitting around her head. Could it be? Aina had never seen these demons before. She had always stayed too far away from the humans to be able to see anything up close.
The perfect young woman that Aina had seen through the crack in her wall came to her. “Welcome,” she said, as she flashed the joyful smile that Aina had witnessed before. Aina clammed up and tried, stupidly, to step ever so slightly away from her oni, not wanting to be associated with them in front of this perfect, beautiful human.
“Hi,” Aina stuttered.
“Hi,” the girl replied back. She looked embarrassed. “I’m so glad you’re here, but I need to confess something.” The girl motioned to her left, where Aina saw that there were 3 long-necked women standing guard. Demons.
Aina burst into laughter. She pointed to the oni, who silently stood guard. She had spent so many years locked away in shame when, it turned out, even the most perfect of the humans moved through the world with demons, too.
I’m a human, just like any other. And I’ll never forget that again, Aina whispered to herself. The girl took her hands, and they spun around, giggling with glee. Their demons watched over them. And Aina was whole.
